'Enzo Coccia' on Serious Eats

Manhattan restaurateur Donatella Arpaia opened her Neapolitan pizzeria, Donatella's on Friday in Chelsea in NYC. To learn the craft, Ms. Arpaia trained for three months with Enzo Coccia, a noted third-generation pizzaiolo from Naples, Italy, where he owns Pizzeria La Notizia. Prior to opening, Ms. Arpaia hosted a preview at which Mr. Coccia made pizza for guests. Here, he builds a couple white (sauceless) pies. True pizza nerds should go back and watch Mathieu Palombino stretch dough in this video. You'll see how similar the men's methods are. Earlier ... Donatella's Blinged-Out Oven » Building Donatella's Pizza Oven »... More

[Photographs: Adam Kuban] This has got to be the shiniest pizza oven in NYC — maybe the world. Slice got a sneak peek at the oven and some of the pizza to come out of it last night at Donatella's, Donatella Arpaia's soon-to-open pizzeria on 19th and Eighth in Chelsea. We'll bring you pizza pics later today, but here are a few shots of the fire-breathing beauty for those of you obsessed with such things. Earlier ... Donatella's PIzza Oven: The Build-Out » Donatella's: The Oven Is Being Cured » Video: Neapolitans Talk Pizza (While Ed Levine Antagonizes Them!) »... More

In this video, Ed Levine antagonizes a room full of passionate pizza obsessives. I love the part where master pizzaioloEnzo Coccia pulls out a historical photo of a pizza-maker from his wallet(!) and the part where Maurizio De Rosa tells Ed about "the original Ed Levine," a 1750 pizza guidebook writer. More

Last week we mentioned that Donatella Arpaia was having a wood-fired pizza oven installed in her upcoming pizzeria, Donatella's. Yesterday, Slice was lucky enough to peep a part of the oven-building process. More

Donatella Arpaia outside her upcoming restaurant, Donatella, with a ton (or more) of bricks for her oven. [Photograph: Joshua Bright/Diner's Journal] Looks like restaurateur and frequent Iron Chef America judge Donatella Arpaia is getting into the Neapolitan pizza game. According to this story on the New York Times's Diner's Journal blog, she's having bricks, sand, and cement all imported from Naples to build her oven and is bringing in the requisite Neapolitan oven-builders to construct it. But probably what's most interesting is that she's going to be studying pizza-making under Enzo Coccia of Pizzeria La Notizia in Naples for... More